Virginia doesn’t know I am putting this post up, but I wanted to make sure you all knew it was her birthday. As our very own Blogger, she has made our blog what it is today.

We appreciate her work and wish her the happiest of birthdays!

Update: Added a picture of her cake!

Last week, ONE members sent over 200,000 letters to their members of Congress and helped persuade 42 senators and 92 representatives to join the fight to save nearly one billion dollars in critical global poverty funding for fiscal year 2007.

Because it could be as late as mid-February before our leaders in Congress declare how much of this funding they will save, ONE members are writing letters to the editor today. One of the most read sections of local papers, these letters will keep the pressure on our elected-representatives and help spread information about this incredibly important, yet largely unknown, fight to save nearly a billion dollars for some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote an Op-Ed to the Washington Post last Monday, urging Congress to “remind the world of the good that can be done in the name of the American people.”

Over 350,000 people’s lives depend on this funding. Please join Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and thousands of other ONE members, by writing a letter to the editor to your local paper today.

Launched yesterday with a rousing speech by Desmond Tutu, the World Social Forum here in Nairobi, Kenya, was in full, colorful swing today. I wish you were all here with me and could experience first hand this incredible display of the depth and diversity of the global poverty movement. Though with a billion dollars of poverty assistance hanging in the balance in the U.S., I am glad you are there to continue raising your voices. I’ll do my best to convey some of the sense of the activities with regular updates here on the ONE Blog.

Today, I helped to introduce a forum on ONE partner campaigns in Africa as part of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. I was blown away as Sarah, the campaign coordinator in Nigeria, talked about how in just two years they have built a coalition of over 700 Nigerian organizations. Even more importantly, their mobilization has already had enormous victories, including the establishment an official Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) office in the Nigerian government. They’re certainly not letting down, however. The Nigerian elections are slated to take place in April and they refuse to miss this important opportunity to hold their leaders accountable. They have collected the platforms of all 15 national parties and are rating them and mobilizing their supporter base to vote based on how their plans to fight poverty and corruption.

In Malawi, their efforts to establish MDG clubs in schools and churches paid off when 1.5 Malawians took park in the Global Day of Action on October 17th. As a result of their mobilizations, their government agreed to one of their core demands and established a policy against gender-based violence.

All over the world people are rising up to hold their leaders accountable to the promises they have made to end extreme poverty, but while I was truly struck by the historic achievements of global poverty movements across Africa, their honest discussion of the challenges they are facing is a stark reminder of how much work there is left to do. Deo, from the Ugandan campaign, talked about how lack of basic infrastructure (roads, cars, electricity, computers, etc.) and the increasing crack downs on civil society activity are making it extremely difficult for them to organize. Not to mention the hard fact that Africa and global leaders have a long way to go if we are to actually achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. But we are indeed just getting started and it was an encouraging reminder when the session closed with an announcement that tomorrow we will launch this year’s dates for global mobilization dates around the G8 Summit and the October 17th Day of Action Against Poverty. There is much to do before tomorrow to prepare, so for now, I wish you all good night from Nairobi.

TIME Magazine is running a great story this week on “Edun Live on Campus,” the Miami University of Ohio student-run business to sell socially conscious EDUN clothing on college campuses.

From the current Time:

“Timing is key in the success of any new venture, and the surging popularity of fair-trade coffee and other organic brands surely makes it easier to communicate the importance of ethically made clothing to prospective customers…

“With 2,600 shirts already sold on the Ohio campus, the 15 undergraduates involved in the project are preparing to outsource the business model to other universities. They’ve been in touch with about 20 other schools interested in establishing their own Edun Live franchises. Faculty advisor Brett Smith says students have been willing to pay a premium for the chance “to change the world one T-shirt at a time.” The shirts typically sell for $10 each, two dollars more than the going local price. Added Smith: “When we remind them that they could make up the difference by skipping one trip to Starbucks that month, they get it.”

This week I had the opportunity to spend some time in Las Vegas, Nevada, to help kick-off the first ONE Vegas meeting. With more than a handful of motivated attendees, the energy and enthusiasm to keep the momentum going was infectious. I’m really excited for ONE to grow in the city.

At the meeting, Las Vegas ONE members rallied together to write letters to Senator Reid urging him save nearly $1 billion for fight to end extreme poverty and AIDS this year. They are also urging others in Nevada to write letters to Congress and help spread the word about ONE.

Adam Bellamy, Vegas ONE yahoo group moderator and the first meeting attendee, said, “I’m really excited about taking on a leadership role with the ONE group out here. I get nervous from time to time due to my lack of experience, but am definitely open to the idea of setting up meetings with leaders and getting involved with political activism.”

Let’s keep the momentum going! I look forward to hearing how the February meeting goes. If you live in the area, please take the time to join the Vegas ONE group, or if you don’t live close, start a new group in your area.

The ONE Campaign was chosen as one of 59 smartest nonprofit organizations online today by GetActive, NetSquared and Squidoo.com.

Accompanying ONE are our partner organizations: Oxfam America, World Vision, The Grameen Foundation, Save the Children, and Product (RED), all outstanding organizations using savvy web 2.0 strategies to reach more people with facts, news and ways to make a difference in the fight against global poverty.

The site recognizes all 59 organizations in no particular order, and asks readers to pick their favorite, so if you’ve got time, head on over and vote!

About half a million children under the age of 15 were infected with HIV in 2006, most contacting the virus during, or shortly after, birth.

According to a new U.N. report, only 9 percent of HIV-infected pregnant women in middle to low-income countries are receiving anti-retroviral drugs to reduce mother-to-child transmissions, and even though some sub-Sahara countries are making progress, only seven low to medium-income countries worldwide are “on track to meet the target of providing access to treatment for 80 percent of women in need by 2010.”

Read the full AP article on the U.N. report here.

Last night my daughter reminded me that her class is celebrating the 100th day of school on Wednesday and that she has a project due: decorating a hat with 100 items. Time to put something together…and quick!

As the typical macaroni decorations are no longer cool for a seven-year old, she asked if she could borrow my ONE pins. Hey, what a great idea, ONE pins representing the ONE-hundreth day of school! I then asked my daughter, “What if someone asks you what ONE is?” She knows I work for ONE, and my children have attended a few events and helped hand out wristbands, but I was curious – did she know what Mom does?

She said, “ONE is a group of people who get together to help poor and hungry people”. She then added “and you help fix AIDS.” I then asked my seven-year old and four-year old the big question: “How do we help these people?” The four-year old chimed in by saying we need to bring food and water to people in Africa. I explained that some people don’t have clean water and that’s a big job. My daughter said: “You have a lot of work to do, Mom.”

I remember my parents telling me when I was this age (and you may have heard it too) “to eat all of your food, there are people starving in Africa.” I remember hearing it, but what did it mean? By me eating all my food – how would that help anyone else? It’s been many years since hearing that, yet, have things changed? I tell my children to be thankful for what we have to eat, and to say a prayer for those who are less fortunate. I think they get it. When they get older, I’ll also introduce the words “grassroots lobbying”…and explain how important it is that we stay in touch with our leaders, that we never let our leaders forget how important these issues are, and letting the children know that they have the power to make change.

So, as my family celebrates the ONE hundredth day of school, and as we all celebrate the new year, take the time to join a local ONE group and help provide awareness in your area. Need an idea for an event? Just ask our future leaders: the children. They’re paying attention.

A recent UPI story features “Running the Sahara.” Those who follow the ONE Blog already know that “Running the Sahara” is a documentary about three incredible ulta-marathoners who are running 4,000 miles across the entire length of the scorching hot Sahara Desert to raise awareness for clean water in Africa.

From the UPI story:

“A U.N. Development Program spokeswoman said Monday they have completed some 2,360 miles of their 4,000-mile-long extreme quest that is taking them from Senegal on the Atlantic Ocean to Cairo…

“For the runners, water is a daily necessity,” Mihova said. “For the people of the Sahara, and throughout the developing world, it is a lifelong concern.”

This is made clear in the UNDP 2006 Human Development Report — Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis — which offers fresh new data on how many poor people go without water and sanitation, the inequality of access within and between nations, and how clean water affects child survival rates.”

Read the full article here.

Wednesday night, around 9 pm, I went to my local print shop in Chicago to fax a stack of letters to Congress. The transmission report for each fax reprinted the first page of each letter, each one with a congressman’s name written right across the top. When I paid, the cashier looked at the reports, and then back at me, like I was some kind of uni-bomber nut. I guess they don’t get many people in the shop who try to convince Congress to stop extreme poverty and disease.

I had just been at Willow Creek Community Church (in the suburbs of Chicago) with an incredible group of people from the Global Connections Advocacy Team. The team’s mission is to teach others about extreme poverty and HIV/AIDS and motivate them to contact their elected officials on the issues. They had asked me to speak about the federal budget – and the timing for the event couldn’t have been more perfect: at the exact same time Congressmen Lee and Shays and Senators Brownback and Durbin were collecting signatures for their “Dear Colleague” letters to ensure that a continuing resolution did not affect the $1b proposed increase in spending on extreme poverty programs in 2007. You can read more about the CR here.

After a detailed discussion on the issues, everyone’s motivations for joining the group, as well as why the U.S. budget process matters to ONE volunteers, the group wrote letters about the global poverty and the 2007 CR to their congressmen. Knowing the number of representatives who had signed onto the letters after ONE volunteers began writing their congressmen two days earlier was an incredibly motivating factor for the group.

I hurried to the print shop, enduring curious stares from the cashier, but I knew it would be worth it. By the “Dear Colleague” letters sign-on deadlines last week, nearly half the Senate and over a fifth of the House had signed. I cannot wait to work with the Willow Creek group again, although next time, I’ll fax from the library.